Philando Castile, a Minnesota motorist, listened. He even told the police officer who pulled him over that he had a gun and was legally able to carry it. None of that mattered since the officer shot and killed him anyway — in front of his girlfriend and her daughter.

The Washington Post in June reported that Castile had THC, the main compound in marijuana, in his system at the time of the stop. However, it was unclear whether Castile was actually impaired at the time he was pulled over.

One of the narratives that comes up when a police shooting of a black person takes place is that the communities where the incidents happened ought not to be scared of cops. We don’t hear much about why many of the police officers involved in these shootings need to not lump all black people in with a criminal element.

Jeronimo Yanez, the police officer who shot Castile and was acquitted in June of second-degree manslaughter, said as much.

“I thought, I was gonna die,” Yanez told investigators from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. “And I thought if he’s, if he has the, the guts and the audacity to smoke marijuana in front of the 5-year-old girl and risk her lungs and risk her life by giving her secondhand smoke and the front seat passenger doing the same thing then what, what care does he give about me. And, I let off the rounds and then after the rounds were off, the little girls [sic] was screaming,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported last month.

I think the point is being made that these shootings/killings of black people are all not one-offs — it’s a disturbing pattern our country refuses to acknowledge. If white people were being shot at this rate, something would’ve been done about it by now.

I know that statistically, more white people are shot by police than black people, but, says The Washington Post, “white people make up roughly 62 percent of the U.S. population but only about 49 percent of those who are killed by police officers. African Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population.” So black people are more than twice as likely to be shot and killed by police officers.

Here’s a running list of things black people can’t do without getting shot, by the police or others:

Ask for help (Renisha McBride)Go to a convenience store at night (Trayvon Martin)Comply with a police officer’s orders (Charles Kinsey)Be a child playing with a toy gun (Tamir Rice)Be a legal gun owner (Philando Castile)When it comes to black lives and responsible gun ownership, the NRA — America’s leading advocacy group for gun owners — folded faster than a U-Haul delivery box. Their lack of standing up for black gun owners is troublesome.

As someone who once looked into membership, until the NRA decides to stand tall for black gun owners, I’ll pass.

Meanwhile, more of us — black and white — have to stand up against police officers who shoot to kill when victims are unarmed and complying with their orders. It’s a tense situation for everyone, but it shouldn’t be deadly.

— Evan F. Moore is a syndicated columnist with GateHouse Media. He writes about the intersection of race, violence and culture. His work has been featured in Rolling Stone, Chicago Tribune and Ebony. Follow him on Twitter @evanfmoore.